Sun 10 Oct 2010
I LOVE TROUBLE. Columbia Pictures, 1948. Franchot Tone, Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Glenda Farrell, Steven Geray, Tom Powers, Lynn Merrick, John Ireland, Donald Curtis, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Barrat, Raymond Burr, Eddie Marr, Sid Tomack. Screenplay by Roy Huggins, based on his book The Double Take. Director: S. Sylvan Simon.
I have any number of things I need to tell you about this film, and I do not know where to begin. But perhaps the most essential thing you need to know is that this is a private eye movie, and that the PI who stars in it, impersonated by Franchot Tone, is Stu Bailey, who later became much more famous as the star of the television series, 77 Sunset Strip, in which he was played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
I could understand the latter as being a gent who could turn the heads of any number of women as he walks by, if not actually being the object of the whistle of the wolf, but Franchot Tone, somewhat less so. As you can see from the list of cast members, there are any number of women in this film, including the former Torchy Blane, aka Glenda Farrell, now relegated to the role of Helen “Bix†Bixby,†faithful secretary. It’s an important role, but to my mind, it’s still a relegation.
Bailey is hired in this movie to follow the wife of an important man in his neck of the woods, which is Los Angeles, or if not, one of the important suburbs.
Either way, the wife of this important man is accused anonymously of having secrets in her past, which includes Portland, where she was a nightclub dancer, and Los Angeles, where she was a bubble bath entertainer.
From which point many leads open up, and many clichés of the gumshoe business ensue as well, and quite excellently so, including witty repartee (of course); being run down by an automobile in a dark alley; being followed by car in a high speed chase before the tables are turned; finding his room and office ransacked; being slugged on the head from behind; being kidnapped by the ransackers and then being drugged by a nurse with a needle with nefarious intent and more. And as suggested above, all kinds of women (other than the nurse) become involved, some essential to the plot, some not.
And speaking of plot, I do not believe that anyone can watch this movie and follow the plot all of the way through. It is complicated.
Perhaps as complicated as the 250 page novel the movie is based on, which I thought I had read when I started this movie, but which I quickly decided I had not.
In any case, I have watched this movie twice, so far, and I think everything makes sense to me. Luckily I was watching on DVD and I could back up whenever I needed to, which was on the second time through, since I didn’t realize I needed to – the first time, that is.
Unhappily, Raymond Burr has only two lines of dialogue. Distinctive lines of dialogue, true, but only two.
[UPDATE] 10-13-10. Turns out that Jeff Pierce did a long review of The Double Take a while ago, the Huggins book that this movie is based on. He apparently read a later paperback edition that updated the story a little bit, to make it a better fit for the TV series, but it didn’t seem to affect the details of the plot any. Jeff also includes huge chunks of the story itself, making his comments doubly worth reading. You can find it here.
October 11th, 2010 at 2:16 am
Nice to know this is good, I’ve been looking for it for years. The novel was a great favorite of Raymond Chandler’s who praised Huggins and Bailey though some of his friends thought he should have prosecuted for hewing too close to his formula.
I wonder if Huggins reused this plot as often as he did the Bailey novella “Appointment With Fear?” The latter was the basis for the films THE GOOD HUMOR MAN and STATE SECRET (THE GREAT MANHUNT) as well as one of the pilots for 77 SUNSET STRIP and the pilot for CITY OF ANGELS. He probably used elements of it on MAVERICK and ROCKFORD too for all I know.
“APPOINTMENT WITH FEAR” and two other novellas with Stu Bailey, all from the late forties slicks, are collected in the Dell paperback tie in 77 SUNSET STIP with a back cover by Robert McGinnis showing the women in the cases.
I enjoyed the book as a good Chandler pastische. It’s not quite as good a book as Huggins TOO LATE FOR TEARS, but Bailey is an attractive sleuth, if not quite as cool and slick as Efrem Zimbalist Jr. — at least the first few seasons. The final season went back to Huggins original and even moved his office to the Bradbury Building, though they retained the now pointless 77 SUNSET STRIP title.
Bailey in the novel could easily be Marlowe save that he smokes his pipe a bit more. There has always been some question why Chandler didn’t take action against Huggins, but considered taking it against Ross Macdonald for THE MOVING TARGET, but I’ve always assumed Chandler knew a rival when he saw one.
Glad to know this is available. It’s one I will clearly have to get.
Re Franchot Tone he was at the tail end of his leading man days here, about to transition like Melvyn Douglas and Frederic March to character parts, so he is a bit long in the tooth for Stu Bailey. He made a pretty good Joel Glass back with Ann Sothern as Garda in the most screwball of the three Joel and Garda Glass films FAST AND FURIOUS (directed by Busby Berkeley), but he was much closer to the right age then.
October 11th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I had the same thought as you, David, that Franchot Tone was rather too old to be Stu Bailey when he made this movie. Doing some investigative work of my own (i.e., IMDB), I found out that he was 43 at the time.
I ended up not mentioning this in my review, though. I did a followup on Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., wondering then how old he was when 77 SUNSET STRIP got underway. Turns out that he was 40, and the series ran for six years.
And unless someone is lying, those are the facts — for whatever they’re worth!
October 11th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I also like Huggin’s THE DOUBLE TAKE but I seem to like I LOVE TROUBLE more than you. My dvd copy is terrible and quality is blurry. Do you have decent copy Steve? Where did you find it.
October 11th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
I thought the movie was Good but Not Great, as the old saying goes. Some parts were Very Good, others were clichéd, or at least they are now.
Having to watch it a second time to catch all of the plot details was both illuminating and frustrating. The clues were there, but they were never expounded upon. The movie simply relied on you catching them the first time, and who does that? Especially when all you see are glimpse of things that don’t mean anything at the time.
But the fact is that what I’m going to call the major clue WAS there, and once you realize what it was, everything snaps into place. Until it does, though, nothing makes sense, and that’s the kind of movie it is.
My copy, by the way, jumps now and then and has scattered flickers and flaws, but it’s sharp and clear. I bought it from a ioffer seller a while back, but his page there is gone now.
October 11th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Huggins based an episode of just about every show he was ever associated with on THE DOUBLE TAKE — including MAVERICK and of course the other Stu Bailey-derived show, CITY OF ANGELS.
October 12th, 2010 at 2:18 am
Max
Thanks. I assumed Huggins did use THE DOUBLE TAKE since like a lot of television writers (and writers in general) recycling was second nature, but I didn’t know for certain.
Steve
Zimbalist was a younger looking 40 than Tone was 43 for whatever it is worth, though Tone at the time he did FAST AND FURIOUS would not have been badly cast as Bailey. Of Huggins four books (if you include the 77 SUNSET STRIP fix-up for Dell) LOVELY LADY PITY ME is the least, but even it is a fair read.
As for Zimbalist it was one of those matches made in heaven, he was the right actor in the right role in the right series at the right time and his touch of maturity made a perfect balance for the youth appeal of Edd Byrnes and Roger Smith (I watched the show for the Zimbalist episodes anyway).
Warner’s copied the basic set up of STRIP to the point of the original losing some of its gloss among all the BOURBON STREET BEAT, HAWAIIAN EYE, SURFSIDE SIX back wash, and they did repeat the same stories a few time over the years, but all in all STRIP was an entertaining series and went out on a classy note that final season when they tried to revert to something closer to Huggins original concept, giving Zimbalist a chance to play something more than just the cool hip Hollywood eye of the earlier seasons.
March 29th, 2011 at 2:14 am
Finally got this one and watched it. A bit dark, but a decent copy good enough for government work.
The dialogue is snappy and smart — much of it lifted directly from the book.
There are some nice touches. Bailey tells the client he is going to Portland and the next scene finds him at a high school checking up on his client’s wife. We aren’t told he’s in Seattle, there is no transition scene, but there is a window behind his head and it is raining outside …
He may look a little mature for Bailey, but Tone’s delivery is perfect, the kind of bantering delivery learned in the many comedies he did and a few tongue in cheek adventure films like LIVES OF THE BENGAL LANCERS.
Bailey was always a pretty Ivy League version of Marlowe — both Tone and Zimbalist were well cast in that way.
I notice the cop characer Lt. Quint (here played by Robert Barrat) survived not only into 77 SUNSET STRIP but CITY OF ANGELS as well (in a markedly different characterization). Here he is smart and honest and would rather not hang Bailey out to dry — unless he needs to.
One too many uses of the subjective camera and fancy black outs for the knock on the head and plunge into the familiar black pool, but this was fairly soon after MURDER MY SWEET and it was stillfresh then. Fewer people had taken the plunge at that point.
My vote for best line:
Caretaker of the joint where the kidnaped Bailey was taken and drugged when asked what the place is called: 733, that’s all. Places like this don’t have a name.
Bailey: That’s what you think.
Granted the plot is complex and they do expect you to pay attention, but it’s no BIG SLEEP. There are no unaccounted for murders. Not that I would want to take a pop quiz on the details.
Glenda Farrell’s Bix could give Mike Hammer’s Velda and Michael Shayne’s Lucy Hamilton tips on how to be a Pi’s secretary.
No classic, but good slick PI stuff with an attractive cast and fast moving plot filled with bright people saying bright brittle things. I’m glad I finally caught up with it.
October 5th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
[…] THE DOUBLE TAKE – Roy Huggins. William Morrow & Co., hardcover, 1946. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition 1946. Pocket 524, paperback, June 1948; Pocket 2524, 2nd printing, 1959. Basis for the film I Love Trouble, 1947, reviewed here. […]